• Box score: Nebraska 67, Illinois 47
* * *
Champaign, Ill. — A 67-47 Sunday win against one of the Big Ten's worst squads, Illinois, sets up the No. 19 Nebraska women's basketball team for a shot at the league lead Thursday night.
The Huskers — now 18-3 overall and 7-2 in the conference — will play at Purdue, league leader at 8-1.
“It's great,” junior point guard Lindsey Moore said during a radio interview after the win. “I love this time of year when you see things start to fall into place. There's always an upset or someone steals a game that really they shouldn't.”
The upset bug bit the Boilermakers, who lost 59-42 to Iowa Saturday. Sunday, No. 9 Ohio State lost 76-65 to Minnesota.
No such trap for NU, which rode Moore's 20 points and heady help defense on Illini forward Karisma Penn to an easy victory. Penn, a preseason All-Big Ten selection, scored three points — 11 below her season average — as the Huskers swarmed around her.
“They threw the ball away several times just trying to feed her,” Nebraska coach Connie Yori said.
Penn committed two turnovers in the first five minutes. NU started on a 8-2 run in that span and never trailed, as 20 second-chance points helped give the Huskers a 40-22 halftime lead.
Illinois (7-15, 1-8) cut the lead to 51-42 with 9:20 left, but Nebraska responded with a 6-0 run.
Moore made a jumper. Junior forward Meghin Williams — who finished with six points and four rebounds — scored on a putback, and then fed sophomore Jordan Hooper for a basket one minute later.
Hooper grabbed a career-high 16 rebounds to offset just 12 points on 4-of-24 shooting.
“Which coach allows someone to shoot 24 times and only make four? That would be me,” Yori said. “She had a bad shooting night ... not super-worried about it.”
Not when freshman Emily Cady scored 17, reserves scored 18 and NU made 21 of 25 free throws. More important to Yori, Nebraska played stifling defense, forcing 23 turnovers and taking four charges.
“We have not been picking up charges at the rate we think we should,” Yori said. “We've talked about it a lot. But today we played a team where we said ‘We've got to come over and do that.' I thought our kids were tough.”
Can it translate to Thursday? The Huskers have handled the bottom half of the league, but are 1-2 against the Big Ten's other top-five teams.
“I've watched Purdue some,” Yori said. “But we've got a lot to learn about them in the next few days.”
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
RSS Feeds